This picture taken from an Israeli position along the border with southern Lebanon shows smoke billowing above the Lebanese village of Adaisseh during Israeli bombardment on Jan. 18, 2024, amid ongoing cross-border tensions as the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group in Gaza continues. (Credit: Jalaa Marey/AFP)
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Catch up on yesterday’s LIVE coverage of Day 104 of the Israel-Hamas war here.
Israel fired white phosphorus on Mais al-Jabal, southern Lebanon, where intense bombing left citizens trapped, the head of the village’s municipality told L’Orient Today’s correspondent. Israeli attacks also struck a house in Blida, the garden of a house in Kawkaba and a road from the town to Souk al-Khan — a car was struck with no reported injuries. Southern Lebanon continued to experience Israeli drone strikes, artillery fire, airstrikes and missiles. Hezbollah, while rejecting US envoy Amos Hochstein’s initial proposal, remains open to diplomatic solutions, according to Lebanese officials speaking to Reuters. The party continued to announce cross-border attacks, to which Israel claimed it was retaliating by striking launch sites.
“I've got almost nothing left,” a farmer in Akkar told L’Orient Today, echoing concerns from agriculture workers in the region and across Lebanon after last week’s storms left farmlands flooded and thousands displaced. President of the Lebanese Farmers' Association Antoine Hoayek noted that it’s too early to estimate the extent of the damage, but warned that increased reliance on imports to offset the loss of Akkar’s production – a major food source in Lebanon — would mean “shortages and higher prices” in the long run. At least 200 greenhouses and two million square meters of wheat, oats, strawberries and tomatoes in Wadi Khaled, Akkar have been devastated by the floods, the Agriculture Ministry said.
A Jan. 4 report by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) forecasts Lebanon’s GDP to grow, for the first time since 2018, by 1.7 percent this year after a 0.2 contraction in 2023. The UN DESA report also expects a slowdown in inflation this year and the next, for which it projected 3.8 percent GDP growth. In December, after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the World Bank reversed its forecast for Lebanon’s 2023 GDP to register its first uptick in five years following a tourism-related boost. The World Bank refrained from prognosticating Lebanon’s 2024 GDP due to “high uncertainty.”
Private school teachers scheduled an open-ended strike starting next Tuesday to demand a sevenfold increase to their monthly retirement pension payments. The announcement comes after private school representatives sat out a meeting originally scheduled yesterday between caretaker Education Minister Abbas Halabi and private school teachers’ representatives. A strike planned for last Tuesday was averted in light of yesterday’s meeting and a “positive atmosphere,” the teachers said. The union’s statement protests private institutions “that continue to deprive more than 4,000 retired teachers of their livelihood...after 40 years of dedicated service to education.” The lira’s depreciation has decimated monthly pension payments to around $16-$30. Public and private school teachers have repeatedly protested to demand improved compensation, resulting last year in months of suspended education in state-run institutions.
The Beirut Indictment Chamber approved the release on bail of jailed Education Ministry official Amal Chaaban, who has been detained since December over suspicions of receiving bribes to expedite the issuance of Iraqi diploma equivalence requests. Chaaban’s conditional release comes after an earlier attempt was refused. The ministry’s secretary of the Pre-University Equivalence Commission was detained for allegedly taking thousands of dollars in bribes to speed up certain applicants’ equivalence requests by the otherwise overwhelmed administration.
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said that Lebanon “stands with Iraq against the Iranian bombing” that killed four people in Irbil on Monday. Mikati emphasized full support for any Arab country that faces any attack while meeting with caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, during which the pair also discussed the premier’s discussions during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed responsibility for the ballistic missiles and suicide drone attacks on the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, claiming they targeted “Zionist espionage centers.” Israeli strikes on Syria have on several occasions killed high-ranking IRGC commanders. Yesterday, Pakistan announced strikes on Iran retaliating against a Tuesday attack on Pakistani territory, Reuters reported. Earlier this month, an ISIS group active in Afghanistan and Pakistan killed more than 100 people in Kerman, Iran with an attack during a memorial for IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani — who was killed by a US drone strike in 2020. On Tuesday, Baghdad recalled its ambassador to Iran for “consultations” after summoning the Iranian envoy to the country. On Wednesday, the Arab League said it would hold an emergency meeting to address Iran’s attack.
Caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi during separate meetings in Doha discussed drug smuggling prevention measures with his Jordanian counterpart and security cooperation between Lebanon and Qatar with the Gulf state’s interior minister. Qatar has provided tens of millions of dollars in aid to the Lebanese army, including food donations and aid allowing a salary boost to troops whose salaries have been decimated by the ongoing economic crisis. During a conference of Arab Interior Ministers last year in Tunisia, Mawlawi expressed Lebanon’s “commitment to the security of the Arab world,” adding that the “salvation of [Lebanon] will only be achieved through the blessings of the Arabs.” Arab states regularly call on Lebanon to restrict the smuggling of drugs across its borders. Saudi Arabia has, since April 2021, banned the import of Lebanese agricultural goods after the discovery of illicit stimulant captagon seeded within a pomegranate shipment. A strike on Syria, attributed to Jordanian warplanes by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, killed nine civilians. Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the strike was launched “on the pretext of fighting drug trafficking.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel planned for a “longer” stage of the war in Gaza after the destruction of what it claimed were the remaining third of Hamas’s fighting regiments in Gaza. Israeli bombardments and ground incursions in southern Gaza intensified, leaving displaced and sheltering Palestinians fleeing and jeopardizing the Nasser Hospital, one of the enclave’s only remaining hospitals. Al Jazeera announced that an Israeli bombardment on Gaza City killed al-Quds channel News Director Wael Fanouneh — the channel’s ninth employee to have been killed since Oct. 7. Israeli military Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi told Israeli news Haaretz fighting could resume in areas previously deemed cleared, notably in northern Gaza where Hamas is reportedly rebuilding its forces.
In case you missed it, here’s our must-read story from yesterday: “Iran’s military strikes: Unraveling complex tensions with Iraq?”
Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz